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Predicting the CCAA Awards

The CCAA will be announcing its men’s basketball All-Conference teams on Tuesday. With our local teams Cal Poly Pomona and Cal State San Bernardino finishing 1-2 there should be pretty good representation.

I’m going to go out on the limb and predict who takes home the top honors and I’ll start with the one that will be the biggest slam dunk

Coach of the Year – Hands down it has to be Greg Kamansky of Cal Poly Pomona. Don’t even think anyone else is in the discussion. The Broncos are 24-2 overall, 20-2 in a pretty tough conference. And they could easily be undefeated.

The Broncos are No, 5 nationally and Kamansky had his work cut out for him early. He had a lot of newcomers to integrate into his system and his team, had a tough schedule early on. Losing junior Shannon Sharpe to grades was yet another challenge.

Still flabbergasted that Kamanksy hasn’t landed a D1 job yet. Their loss!

Player of the Year – This one isn’t so clear cut but there aren’t more than two choices – Mitchel Anderson of Cal Poly Pomona and Kwame Alexander of Cal State San Bernardino.

Alexander led the conference in scoring and rebounding which is difficult to do. He is the flashier player but Anderson has always been Mr. Steady. Cal Poly’s style of play doesn’t lend itself to gaudy statistics either.

There is a school of thought that says you pick the top player on the best team but I have never thought the POY has to come from the winning team. It just shouldn’t come from a team not in the top 3-4.

I would probably pick Alexander but there isn’t a wrong choice here. Both are worthy and it’s close enough I wouldn’t surprise if it ends up a tie since there are 12 coaches voting.

Onward

Freshman of the Year – This is one where it really doesn’t matter the record of the team. The player has to be a true freshman, not a red-shirt freshman. After looking at the numbers, I’m going with Alex Fertig of Cal State Monterey Bay. (13.4 ppg).

Other candidates include Cal Poly Pomona’s Jordan Faison (8.5 ppg, 3 rpg), who has improved considerably since the start of the season, as well as Joshua Munzon of Cal State Los Angeles (9.2 ppg, 4.2 rpg).

Newcomer of the Year – A real tough one here. Don’t think they consider 4-year school transfers. I’ll go with Cal State San Bernardino’s Brian Goins, a transfer from Diablo Valley CC. He’s third in the CCAA in scoring (15.4 ppg). This is probably the toughest of the categories though with a lot of the CCAA coaches relaying on solid JC transfers,